The Long Picturesque, or Unraveling the Rules of Art

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Exploring the evolution of the picturesque aesthetic from the sixteenth century, this book examines its impact on art forms such as painting, printmaking, landscape design, and architecture. It highlights how this aesthetic transformed the relationship between art and nature, as well as the viewer's interaction with images. Drawing on lesser-known critical texts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the author analyzes a diverse range of artists, including Fra Angelico, Raphael, and Rubens, focusing on their spatial imagination rather than stylistic history.